


Starvation

by Dream Mender (Llewcie)



Category: The Dresden Files - All Media Types
Genre: Bob's Backstory, M/M, Touch-Starved
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-01
Updated: 2016-02-01
Packaged: 2018-05-17 15:47:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,125
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5876593
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Llewcie/pseuds/Dream%20Mender
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bob is made corporeal, but is given no explanation, and is left to wait. He's driving Harry crazy with the pacing...</p>
            </blockquote>





	Starvation

Are you getting… is that stubble, Bob?” Harry reached out to Bob’s jaw, his finger ghosting over the fine growth of bristly silver that had caught the afternoon light. Bob, who had been brooding in the leather armchair all day under the pretense of reading a book, gave a start at the feather touch of Harry’s hand.   
  
Harry pulled away, trying not to show his hurt. It had been like this for days, even since the Council had made their seemingly arbitrary decision to end Bob’s imprisonment. Harry and Bob both hadn’t understood, and although Harry had been both astonished and grateful that Bob had been set free of his curse, he had soon come to realize that this was not freedom, but some sort of temporary state of affairs—a holding pen. Parole.   
  
And Harry was the sacrifice on the table—the price of Bob’s freedom. He had been there once before, in a roundabout way, and Bob had refused the buying-price outright, drawing his own line in the sand, and then stepping over it, leaving Harry behind. Now, things were even less simple.   
  
Bob had come home shaken, and with Harry’s fate hanging in the balance, he had barely dared to breathe, much less practice magic. They had both been waiting for Mai to come and extend terms, but she hadn’t come, and Bob was about to crawl through the roof. Harry felt like he had been walking on unbroken eggs for the whole week, bringing in food and watching Bob pace, mutter, brood, and vanish into the lab only to emerge and repeat the entire process over again, and he had just about _had it._ He stretched out his fingers, scowled, and then took his dearest friend gently, or mostly so, by the jaw. Bob blinked at him, surprise clear in his pale, pale eyes.  
  
“Stop this. You’re driving me completely fucking crazy.”   
  
Bob gazed at him calmly for a moment, his chest expanding outwards in a sigh. Then he lifted a hand and curled his long fingers across Harry’s palm, exerting a slight pressure so that Harry would loose his grip. A cool chill prickled over Harry’s arm and shoulder at Bob’s touch—Bob had, for the most part, avoided touching him since his transition to corporeality. Perhaps it was too much reality, the touching—Harry didn’t know. All he knew was that he wanted, badly, to haul Bob into a gigantic bear hug for a week and bask in all the physical affection that he had wanted to spend in an entire lifetime of knowing the man and having only the ghost to keep him company. But Bob, when Harry had first brushed a hand against him, had frozen solid. Harry hadn’t chanced it again until now.  
  
Now he was just too damn annoyed to care.  
  
Except that Bob had kept hold of his hand, and was now cradling it in both of his own, in his lap. Bob swirled a soft circle in the center of Harry’s palm with his thumb, not meeting Harry’s eyes. Which was fine with Harry, because he probably looked slightly glaze-eyed and gape-jawed. Bob traced Harry’s long fingers with his own, very slowly, over each crease and ridge and sworl. He carefully sketched the lines of Harry’s palm, all the way to the wrist and back up again, and slowly, over the mound of his thumb, and again on the opposite side, under his pinky finger. Bob’s expression was that of utter concentration, as if he were memorizing Harry’s hand for a pattern in clay. Harry’s eyes were closing, and he swallowed thickly—he couldn’t help it, but he was beginning to feel the heat of Bob’s touches elsewhere. Memories of his late adolescence… hell, his _entire_ adolescence in Bob’s masterful presence came flooding back to him, and he shivered. And then hoped that Bob didn’t notice.   
  
At least, Bob’s fingertip didn’t stop moving. Harry would take that. Life was lonely. He squeezed shut his eyes and relaxed his head back against the couch. It only startled him slightly when Bob began to speak, his voice barely above a whisper.  
  
“When I was taken, it was at night. They had found Winefride… the day before, I think—I had gone out to find herbs for her illness, and when I returned, she was gone. Taken.”  
  
His finger breached the thin creases of Harry’s wrist, and with slow strokes he mapped the heavy blue veins under the pale olive-tinted skin there. Harry shivered again, and Bob wouldn’t have been able to miss it this time. He didn’t stop talking.  
  
“They kept me in a hole in the ground, heavily warded, for weeks, while they tried to decipher my notes. It proved beyond their small abilities. Nothing they could offer me was worth my cooperation. Not my life, not freedom from my imprisonment. Winefride was gone—I felt her go. There was nothing left to my world but the darkness.”  
  
Harry had opened his eyes now, and was watching Bob as he spoke, but Bob’s own gaze didn’t swerve from Harry’s forearm, where he was now tracing complex patterns with a delicate touch. Entranced by the feel of Bob's fingertips stroking his skin and now grieving for the man's bitter loss, Harry was frozen, unable to speak or give comfort in any manner.   
  
“During that time, my beard, which was already considerably longer than I normally kept it, grew into a wild tangle. When they finally decided on how to be rid of me, they hauled me out of the pit, out of my own filth, and washed me. A young man who I did not know came and cut off my beard.” Bob blinked, twice. “He shaved me with a new blade, and his hands were shaking so much that he cut my cheek. I bled on the ground. The Wardens who were guarding me… they set Hellfire on the blood that fell, and bade the young man burn his clothes.”  
  
Harry found his voice at last, rough around the edges though it was. “Did he?”   
  
Bob’s fingers brushed up across the soft skin at the crease of Harry’s arm, and heat blossomed through him in a rush. He was starting to sweat lightly, and he took a deep breath, filling his lungs with the comparatively cool air of the apartment. Bob began drawing wave patterns across his biceps, crossing over that damnably sensitive skin at the fold and heating Harry’s core. Harry tried to concentrate on not looking like a lust-soaked rag.  
  
“No. He did not. Later, during the first years of my imprisonment in my skull, he came to show me the blood-soaked clothes. He was certain that somehow, they would be instrumental in releasing me, and he was trying to extract service from me in return. He… died, suddenly. The clothes disappeared.” Bob fell silent, his eyes now on Harry’s.  
  
Harry failed to register that for a long moment, and when he did, he flushed.   
  
Figuring the subject had been breached, he went for the heart. “Bob… you haven’t touched me, or let me touch you, since you came home. Until now. Why?”  
  
“Is it something that you wanted, Harry?” Bob looked more curious than anything, but Harry could see, behind his eyes, what was riding on the reply.   
  
In answer, Harry straightened slightly, leaning in toward the pale necromancer. “Will you take off your jacket for me, Bob? Some of these layers? All of them, even?”  
  
It meant that Bob had to take his hand away, but that wasn’t a bad thing, because slowly, eyes never leaving Harry, he began to shrug out of his coat, and then waistcoat. Harry watched him like a starving man as he slowly undid the pearl buttons of his black silk shirt, revealing a black undershirt underneath. As Bob tugged off the button-down, he exposed biceps the color of alabaster, and from the look, Harry thought most likely the density, as well. He wanted badly to know. Bob blinked slowly at him. “Is this to your liking, Harry?”  
  
Harry stood, and extended his hand. “Almost. But I’m going to be selfish and greedy and ask you to come upstairs. Come upstairs with me?” His voice was breathy, but he didn’t care.   
  
Bob hesitated, and then slid his hand, cool and uncertain, into Harry’s. They walked upstairs, taking each stair in isolation, stepping together. At the top, Harry sat down on the bed, and tugged off his shirt, and then lay down on the bed. He scooted over and left ample room. Bob studied him for a moment, hands on his hips, the evening sun outlining his newly-exposed arms in creamy golden light. Then he half-turned and slid on to the bed, pausing to hook his fingers under his shirt and pull it off. Harry watched the play of his tight, wiry muscle in the sunset light, fascinated by Bob’s extraordinary beauty. Even more so, when Bob slid into bed next to him.  
  
Harry was immediately taken with the depth and intricacy of shadows, and the play of muscle under near-translucent skin. His fingers trembled before stroking delicately across Bob’s hard clavicle. Bob’s eyes fluttered closed at the first brush of contact. Touch-starved, he bowed and broke without argument, settling with a soft moan into the mattress as Harry traced the long lines of his ribcage, and back over his well-defined abdominals. He had been right—the man was as hard as marble, but warm and velvety under Harry’s hands. The sensation was intensely erotic, and it was all Harry could do not to use his lips instead of his fingertips. It was a near thing, though.   
Finally, when he couldn’t bear not to kiss Bob, he leaned down and chose an innocuous place—his forehead. Harry pressed his lips there for a long moment, and then slipped both arms around Bob and dared to give him the embrace that he had so longed to give. He pressed his nose into the curve of Bob’s neck and sighed softly. Bob’s hands stroked lightly up his back, giving him chills and hot flashes at the same time, and Harry's hips rolled involuntarily, very slightly, against Bob's thigh.   
  
“Harry,” Bob murmured. “Harry, don’t start what you're not willing to finish…”  
  
“Gods, Bob.” Harry grinned, pressing a small kiss against Bob’s shoulder, close to where his lips rested. “I’ve been waiting my entire life to start with you. This has been the most excruciating week of my life…”   
  
Bob paused in his stroking, for a moment, as if he were debating. When he spoke, immediately Harry knew he had made his choice. “When you first touched me… it frightened me, how much I wanted you, Harry.” Bob kissed Harry’s throat, the soft beard stubble tickling and scratching the thin skin there in a way that made Harry writhe. “I didn’t know how you would respond, and I was afraid to attempt it—you are my only harbor.” He trailed a hot line down Harry’s jaw with his tongue, ending with a nip that earned him half-moon shaped nail marks in his back.   
  
Harry breached over him, and sank down again, lips already parted, and pressed his mouth down over Bob’s mouth. At first gentle; then they sucked and fought themselves as close as physically possible into the kiss, hands grappling for purchase on each other’s bodies.   
  
Bob flipped Harry neatly on his back and broke the kiss only to reposition himself at a better angle. Harry arched his back, his teeth closing on Bob’s bottom lip, tongue darting out to lick at his skin, to taste the rich honey salt taste of him. Bob smiled from the intense pleasure, sucking Harry’s lip and then sinking briefly to his throat to taste the skin there. He nuzzled Harry softly, his hand threaded through Harry’s wool-soft hair.  
  
“I suppose this means my fears were unfounded?”  
  
Harry chuffed gentle laughter, his chest expanding softly and rocking the bed. “I’ve never known you not to ask for what you wanted, Bob.” From this position, he could stroke the long dancer’s arch in Bob’s back, the one he had spent countless hours staring at as a kid. At first with fingers and then with his palms, he felt the contour of it over and over.   
  
Bob looked abashed, gazing upwards through silvery eyelashes that made him look ethereal. “It won’t happen again, wizard Dresden,” he said teasingly. Harry grinned, and then spared one hand from his fascinated exploration of Bob’s back to curl around the back of his neck and pull him down and continue what they had begun.   
  
The small of Bob’s back became one of Harry’s favorite spots to rest his hand.


End file.
